


bottle episode

by mouseymightymarvellous



Category: Naruto
Genre: 2020 GaaSaku Free-For-All Fanfest, F/M, Hokage!Sakura, diplomatic relations (if you know what i mean), post-war AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:20:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26854342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mouseymightymarvellous/pseuds/mouseymightymarvellous
Summary: Bottle Episode:An episode of a tv series designed to cost as little money as possible, wherein [typically] only the regular cast [or part of the regular cast] is filmed at a single location. Bottle episodes are often slow paced and focused on characterization and relationships, freeing up budget for a big, bombastic episode laden with special effects and action.bottle(n):a container, typically made of glass or plastic and with a narrow neck, used for storing drinks or other liquids.bottle(v):place (drinks or other liquid) in bottles or jars.to bottle something up:repress or conceal feelings over a period of time.
Relationships: Gaara/Haruno Sakura
Comments: 16
Kudos: 93





	bottle episode

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written for the 2020 GaaSaku Free-For-All Fanfest. Much love to the fantastic mod, Mika, and to whomstever was the anonymous source of the prompt: _Hokage!Sakura, sexual tension so thick you can cut it with a knife/or super fluffy/it can only be one or the other, can it just be a scene with only the two of them and no one to interrupt them plz_.

Sakura shuts the door on a set of bone white grins with a decisive snap.

Konoha is the only diplomatic party left in Suna and Sakura recognizes Gaara’s favourite personal guards by sight (even if she—politely—wouldn’t ever admit to knowing their names) but, even so, she refrains from sticking her tongue out at Sai when she leaves him at the entrance to coordinate her own personal guard. Appearances must be upheld, even if appearances involve the Hokage entering the Kazekage’s personal quarters holding a bottle of alcohol on the second to last night of the bi-yearly Kage Summit. The door shuts firmly, and Sakura pretends that she doesn’t hear the snickering on the other side. They can gossip all they like between the eight of them, as long as the gossip goes no further.

Or, well. Ino did leave the bottle of Sakura’s preferred local poison on the countertop of the kitchenette in Sakura’s favourite of Suna’s diplomatic suites. She likes the view from the bedroom windows in the morning, small as they are to keep out the sand. There is nothing quite like the sight of the sun breaking across the desert in all the world. The bottle was accompanied by a small card with a lipstick print in Ino’s signature pink as the only sign of who the bottle was from. Sakura had definitely ignored the small foil packets Ino had also thoughtfully left next to the alcohol.

It’s not like that.

It’s just—

Well.

Even in Suna—the Summit concluded and the trade agreements signed and peace assured for a little bit longer—even now, Sakura cannot be free of the weight of the robes heavy on her shoulders.

“Sakura,” Gaara says, wiping his hands on a towel as he makes his way from his kitchen to greet her in the entryway.

It smells like cumin and baking bread and green things.

She’s spent the last week sitting both next to and across from him at various tables, each of them negotiating on behalf of their village and then negotiating together on behalf of peace. It’s almost strange to see him, now, in loose pants and a worn-looking tee with—inexplicably—the neckline cut out low enough that Sakura can see his collarbones.

“Sorry I’m late.” Sakura smiles at him, and doesn’t look at his hands or the soft hollow of his throat. “My last meeting at the hospital ran over with that new data on the flu your infectious disease unit has been tracking up north. There are some novel genetic markers—”

“Sakura,” Gaara interrupts, his answering smile a little wry and a little small, but still warm. “Unless someone is going to die overnight, I would like at least one evening to talk with you and not have it be about work. Is anyone dying?”

He throws the towel over a shoulder and walks up to her, gently turning Sakura with a palm to her waist.

Sakura moves with him, letting him have her back, and Gaara ease her out of her robe.

His fingers brush the back of her neck. They’re warm, and Sakura shivers.

“People are always dying,” Sakura retorts, sharper than she means to be.

Gaara carefully hangs her robe in the small hall closet, and bends down to pull her slippers out of the basket of house slippers he stores there. (Sakura knows he keeps them specifically for her because they are bright pink with cherries on them, and he’d been so pleased the first time she had come into his apartments to find them waiting for her. Sakura knows he keeps them specifically for her, and she has never known since the first time he shyly offered them to her what, exactly, to do about that.)

He’s kneeling as he carefully helps her slip on one, then the other.

Sakura does not put a hand on his shoulder or in his hair to steady herself; she’s a shinobi, she doesn’t need steadying.

Gaara does not drag his thumb along her instep.

Still, his eyes are green and growing like the plants that she knows will be overflowing his windowsills and tabletops and shelves.

Sakura looks away.

Gaara stands, warm at her side.

He’s not tall enough to loom over her, but Sakura feels delicate and sheltered as he fits himself around her space.

“Come, the food will be ready in a few minutes.”

Sakura follows him along the familiar walk to the kitchen.

They are just Sakura and Gaara tonight, their titles left on the conference tables of the day, so the little kitchen table has been mostly cleared of what Sakura suspects—if he’s anything like her, which she knows he is, at least in this—is its usual pile of paperwork and briefs and books, leaving only a small, happily blooming succulent and a “thank you” card featuring a hand drawn smiling sun. The table is set with beautiful clay plates and bowls, and Sakura has spent enough time brokering trade deals to recognize Suna ceramics when she sees them.

Gaara returns to the small stovetop, and Sakura peaks into cabinets until she finds a small set of cups, appropriate for the mezcal.

“Here,” Sakura says, perching her hip against the counter at Gaara’s elbow and handing him a cup. “Cheers.”

With the hand not currently occupied stirring, Gaara accepts the cup, their fingers brushing.

“To food in good company,” Gaara offers.

“To no one dying tonight,” Sakura answers.

Their cups tap gently, and neither of them breaks eye contact as they both take a sip.

The alcohol is clear and shocking and bright on her tongue. and Sakura hums contentedly, letting her eyes flutter shut as she savours the warmth.

Like desert storms and the mid afternoon sun up above or lightning flashing down to kiss the sand.

When she opens her eyes, Gaara is still watching her.

Sakura reflexively wets her lips, her tongue catching the last kiss of alcohol there.

Gaara swallows heavily, and Sakura can’t help by watch the motion of his throat.

She feels hollowed out and filled, hungry and wanting and—

“Go sit,” he rasps out. “Food is ready.”

“Can I help with anything?” Sakura asks.

Gaara stops her with his palm ghosting along her side.

She doesn’t remember him turning away from the stove, but he’s facing her, now, and Sakura has to focus on keeping her weight balanced firmly on her heels.

“Sakura,” he chides, “you’re my guest. Go sit. I’m not going to throw you out because you aren’t being productive; I am happy to have you here.”

That catches in Sakura’s throat, and she is the one swallowing now.

She heads to the table, sits.

The food is delicious, and they speak about easy things between bites: Temari’s third pregnancy, Lee’s new genin team’s attempts to singlehandedly complete every D-rank mission in Konohakagure, the books they have read recently, the health of Gaara’s particular orchids, that time Ino got all of Team 10 arrested on suspicion of fermenting revolt when Ino was actually just flirting with the Daimyo’s youngest daughter. Gaara has taken up gardening and cooking in equal measure, and Sakura teases him gently about his eventual retirement and dotage as a little grandmother, her smile easy on her lips and around her fork.

The mezcal is also excellent, and Sakura pours with a heavy hand. It is not enough to erase everything they do not speak about, but it does mean Sakura’s shoulders relax inch by inch, until she can almost forget the weight she usually carries there. She is safe in Gaara’s space—she can hang her robes and her duties and her worries up in the small closet in the hall and just be for few hours.

The mezcal and Sakura’s heavy hand also mean that Sakura does not move when she realizes that, at some point, their feet have gotten tangled up under the small kitchen table they are eating at.

Gaara’s gaze on her is as clear and shocking and bright as the mezcal on her tongue, and Sakura wonders what he sees when he looks at her.

Her robe is hanging in his hall closet, but Sakura wears her inheritance on her forehead for all to see. The Konoha delegation will leave Suna in two days. There are eight guards standing watch on this suite of rooms. Sakura carries grief in the curve of her mouth, these days, as she has for years now, and she wonders sometimes in the early morning light if one day the strength she has carved into her bones will no longer be enough.

“Sakura.” Gaara touches the back of her hand. “Where did you go?”

“Why do you say my name like that?” Sakura demands.

She does not move her hand.

Neither does Gaara.

Gaara watches her for a long moment.

“I don’t—“ He falters for a breath, but steels his jaw, and Sakura is reminded that Gaara is not only growing things kept carefully in greenhouses and in kitchen windowsills, but also the desert storm brewing, the mid afternoon sun blazing overhead, the lightning strike kissing the dunes. He is wearing a t-shirt that he obviously stole from his brother, soft and worn, and, still, Sakura recognizes him as the boy who screamed whole nights for the demon that rode his soul, as a king crowned and bloodied. “I don’t want you to forget who you are, underneath it all. I don’t want you to forget that I see you, underneath it all. You’re my friend.”

Sakura flinches, and reflexively goes to pull her hand to her chest, standing fast enough that her chair topples behind her.

Gaara catches her by the wrist, his thumb flush to her pulse.

“Oh, Sakura, no. Please. Please don’t run. I know I can never keep you, but please don’t run.”

They have never fought and meant it. And Sakura is not one to overestimate her abilities. But she gave up diminishing herself a long time ago. They have never fought with the intention to permanently do harm, and yet they both know who would walk away in the end. (Sakura, equally, is crowned in legacy and blood. Her eyes, too, are green; she is a creature of fire and succession and devouring hunger.) Gaara catches her by the wrist and knows full well he cannot hold her there.

HIs thumb flush to her pulse has Sakura rooted: glass and ozone where sand once danced, or a barren lava flow.

“I don’t understand,” Sakura pleads.

Their dishes are mostly clear and the bottle of mezcal is more than half empty.

Gaara’s smiles have always been a small and precious things to tend, to watch grow; as particular as the orchids he loves and even more prone to withering away under the wrong conditions. Sakura has always wanted to pluck each one to press into a book for safekeeping, all too wary that one day she might not have anything left to her of them but the memories.

Gaara’s fingers around her wrist are warm, and Sakura lets him tug her hand to his chest.

He’s even warmer there, her palm echoing with his heartbeat.

His shirt is as soft as she’s imagined, staring at him in the golden light of the kitchen.

“Sakura,” Gaara manages, helplessly, fond and sad and overflowing with so much they’ve never dared say. “You must know, after all these years. Surely, you must know.”

He bought her cherry covered slippers because he knew they would make her laugh when she was twenty-three and newly invested and feeling more alone than she had ever felt in her life.

Sakura digs her fingers into his shirt, and she thinks she can hear the crackle of the wire that is strung across the distance between their ribs.

Her palm to his heartbeat and his thumb to her pulse.

Gaara’s gaze is as clear and shocking and bright as the mezcal, and he tastes like it, too, when Sakura takes a step around the table so that she can kiss him.

Gaara tilts his head for her easily, her free hand going to his hair, his free hand finding the small of her back.

Sakura’s knee finds space on his chair next to his thigh, and then she’s in his lap and their chests are flush and she suddenly has two hands with which to rake her fingers through his hair, finding a spot behind his ear that makes Gaara hum in the back of his throat.

Gaara kisses her like rain in the desert, and Sakura—in the small part of her mind not currently devoted to cataloguing every inch of his body pressed against hers—wonders what he thinks will bloom in her.

And she is: blooming. She is clear eyed, every touch a shock of brightness lighting her up, the wire taught between their ribs snapped close and electrifying.

Sakura presses herself down into Gaara, and he gives way to her like mountains to glaciers.

The whole world is the two of them caught in the warm light of the kitchen, Sakura's fingers tangled in the loose neck of Gaara’s shirt and Gaara’s palms steady against her back, the curve of her shoulder.

“Can I have you,” Gaara asks into the soft space between their mouths as they breathe, “for tonight?”

His eyelashes are painfully blond and Sakura wonders what they’ll feel like against the scars feathered along her stomach.

Sakura wishes she could promise him more than just this night, but her robe is hanging in the hall closet, and she cannot offer anything more: anything more is not hers to give.

“Tell me I can stay,” Sakura orders him.

“Stay,” Gaara begs her. “Let me make you food and grow you flowers and love you. Just stay.”

Sakura kisses him again, biting and clear eyed and resounding.

Gaara’s thumb presses to the pulse thundering in her throat.

“I’m not yours,” Sakura tells him, “I can’t be. But I wish I could belong to you.”

“Let me steal you for tonight,” Gaara begs her. “Let me steal you from Konoha for just one night.”

Sakura kisses him for that.

She would kiss him all night, so that she could make love to him in the dawn creeping through the windows, but they won’t have a morning. Not the two of them.

So, instead, Sakura pulls that stupid fucking shirt over his head, and lets it drop to the ground, drags her blunt nails down his chest, pauses with her palm to his stomach. Gaara gasps like she has gutted him, even has his hands scramble to pull her long skirt up around her waist.

He hisses through bared teeth when he slips his fingers between her thighs, and Sakura’s hips buck reflexively into his touch as he presses on her clit through her embarrassingly damp underwear.

“Fuck. Sakura.”

“Yes,” Sakura agrees, “let’s do that.” And she stands so that she can wrench her dress over her head, the colourful caftan forgotten the moment it touches the floor.

Sakura stands in the golden light of Gaara’s kitchen wearing nothing but her underwear and her desire.

She doesn’t have room to be self-conscious about the blush curving down her bare breasts, too occupied with watching Gaara watch her.

“Why,” Sakura demands, “are your pants so stupid?”

She doesn’t quite remember Gaara standing up, for all that the shock of his palms on her hips, urging her back towards the counter, is ringing under her skin. She’s too busy to remember, because she is trying to figure out how his stupid fucking pants come off.

Gaara pulls at her damp scrap of underwear in response, and Sakura steps out of them as Gaara continues to walk her backwards, his hands on her ass boosting her up onto the countertop.

It is not remotely hygienic, but then Gaara is sucking bruises onto her breasts, and Sakura forgets to care.

“Fuck,” she spits out, giving up on his pants and instead slipping her hand down to pinch her own clit. “Fuck!”

Gaara’s hips flex, his cock bumping the back of her hand when he looks down. “Sakura. Fuck.”

“Get your stupid pants off, and yeah—”

He kisses her stupid mouth, kisses her stupid, and then bats her fingers away from her cunt.

Sakura whines against his cheekbone, and Gaara bites at the hinge of her jaw.

“I’ve got you,” he tells her, his lips to the soft skin under her ear. “Can I have you, Sakura?”

Sakura takes his cock in hand in response and tilts her hips so that he slips easily through her folds, head catching for a breathless second, slick and hot and shocking.

Gaara’s fingers press bruises into her hips.

“Sakura,” he chokes out, pleading.

Sakura shifts her grip and tilts the angle of her pelvis, and shivers at the stretch of opening to him.

Gaara holds himself completely still, his breath dammed behind his teeth, and Sakura slowly sinks her weight down, until their hips are flush and his cock is completely sheathed in her.

“Let me forget?” Sakura begs him.

Gaara isn’t a particularly large man, but he fits a hand to the small of her back and the other to her hip, shoulders curving around her, and she feels caught by the force of him.

“You’ll remember this,” Gaara promises her. “This is yours to keep.”

Tonight. The taste of his mouth. The warm kitchen light caught in the soft hollow of his throat, between his collarbones. The sweetness of his fingers on her clit as he fucks into her with purposeful strokes.

But not him.

Sakura kisses him again, and urges his hips faster with her hand to his ass.

Neither of them can keep the other.

So Sakura kisses Gaara like tomorrow is dead and there is only this breath and then the next.

Enough time, and glaciers can reshape the world. But they don’t have time for that. They have time only for this: lightning kissing the sand, and the glass left in the aftermath.

Sakura presses her forehead against Gaara’s, and lets herself believe in the blooming there, amidst all that green.


End file.
